Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Dancing in the Mud? Andean Aftermath

There’s dancing in the streets of Buenos
Aires today, just as there is in New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro – it’s Fat
Tuesday, and Carnaval celebrations are in full swing. It’s not the spectacle in
the Argentine capital that it is in Brazil or Louisiana, but neighborhood murgas (troupes) still kick up
their heels. So do those in Gualeguaychú,
the acknowledged capital of Argentine Carnaval, and in Uruguay (whose Museo del Carnaval in Montevideo - pictured below - is well worth a visit).

Meanwhile, in the Andes on both sides of the border,
Argentines and Chilean are digging their way out of the mud left by summer
storms in Argentina’s Mendoza
province, which have closed the main border crossing, and the Chilean
village of San
Pedro de Atacama, which received almost unprecedented rainfall. In the
short term, there’s been no solution for the disruptions caused by these
unusual weather events.

Last Friday, I speculated that Chile’s southerly Paso Vergara
might be an alternative crossing to Argentina but, according
to the Mendoza daily Los Andes, the Vergara is also closed. That leaves
only the Paso Pehuenche
(pictured above, looking toward the Chilean side) from Talca
to Malargüe,
but the paper adds that the increased traffic has overwhelmed the customs and
immigrations facilities along the route, “with lines of vehicles one kilometer
long, and an almost five hour wait at the border post of Las Loicas,” on the
Argentine side. Lines at the Chilean border post of La Mina were even longer.

With insufficient facilities at a rarely used crossing,
Argentine authorities have kept the border open beyond the normal 6 p.m.
closure, but that’s only helped slightly. According to one eastbound traveler,
the usual five-hour journey from Talca to Malargüe took 11 hours this time.
It’s still looking like a challenging season, especially with Mendoza’s wine
harvest festival on the horizon.

Meanwhile, I received a couple first-hand reports from and
about San Pedro de Atacama. My friend Martin Beeris, owner of the Cosmo Andino travel agency in San
Pedro, reports that “The road to Calama
got washed away, big, big holes really. All sites closed for three full days,
only now slowly getting back to normal. The Río San Pedro returned to its
course, where it used to run years ago” before authorities decided to build
housing projects there. “It's a mudpool right now, many people have debris,
rocks and shit up to their necks, some have actually lost their homes. No lives
lost and that's a miracle. I had not seen this kind of rain since 2001,
possibly even 1988. 33 millimetres in less than one hour, the first time we got
wet.”

On top of that, a Dutch
cyclist who was camping nearby got swept away by a mudflow but,
fortunately, Carabineros police rescued him, “buried in mud and water, in
precarious conditions and dressed only in shorts,” after receiving reports of an
unattended tent and bicycle. With temperatures below freezing at night, the
cyclist was fortunate to suffer only a broken leg and is now hospitalized in Antofagasta.

On Friday, I also speculated that the Hotel Alto Atacama might have
been affected by the floods, and hotel publicist Kristina Schreck tells me that
“the Alto is closed until Feb. 17 until
we can get everything in order. We've been moving reservations and/or returning
money to clients booked during this time.” It was not, as I had guessed, an
issue of access up the narrow river canyon, but that “The pools flooded and the
generator area was flooded so they're trying to fix that - less of an access
issue and more of a cleaning up issue.” It’s probably a tossup whether Mendoza
or San Pedro returns to normality first.

Simply write me at
southerncone (at) mac.com, and I will send a code for a free download of either
Argentina or Chile, up to a total of ten (no more than one per person, please).
For those of you who use Android devices, I regret that Google does not permit such
promotions, so you’ll have to shell out US$2.99 (which presumably should not
break your budget).

1 comment:

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